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- Police in Vietnam have raided a scammers’ meeting with 300 attendees
- The scammers have already stolen over $1 million from roughly 500 victims
- The scammers are promoting a fake virtual currency linked to ancestral treasures
Police in Vietnam have disbanded a meeting organized by scammers who were trying to lure 300 unsuspecting attendees into their trap. The malicious actors have already pocketed over $1 million from 500 victims spanning across individuals and businesses. The scammers are luring victims with a fake virtual currency that they claim can help investors benefit from ancestral treasures, adding a twist to normal tricks malicious actors use to lure unsuspecting victims.
Victims Promised Loans Without Collateral
According to the country’s broadcaster VTV, the scammers were defrauding victims using a company named Million Smiles. The company was behind Quantum Financial System (QFS), a fake virtual currency that allows holders to potentially secure loans without the need for collateral and without the borrowed amount attracting interest.
The scammers would use physical meetings to persuade victims to invest between $150 and $1,400. To hide their intentions, the scammers held public meetings in rented halls in high-end locations. Police confiscated electronic devices and documents saying that the company’s operations and products were against the country’s financial laws.
Investigations revealed that the scam’s leader is broke and intends to defraud unsuspecting individuals and misappropriate the funds. The Vietnamese police raid comes two weeks after Nigerian police arrested more than 700 suspected crypto scammers.
Scammers Use Posh Buildings To Hide Operations
The Nigerian scammers operated from a posh building that could be mistaken for “a corporate headquarters of a financial establishment,” making it easy to lure victims and hide their operations from the police.
It also comes two days after a Kaspersky researcher revealed that scammers are publicly sharing their wallets’ seed phrases on YouTube videos’ comment sections to target “unprincipled people.”
Although the Vietnamese police have disbanded the crypto scam, it’s unlikely that victims will be compensated.
